Friday, February 10, 2012

In My Hands

These years I've spent collecting bones
have worn my fingerprints away,
and left my hands as smooth as stone,
as blank as id's half-shadowed face.
Without a hint of proof or trace
of truth to who I claim I am,
will you let me in, let me stay,
and feel the story in my hands?

These years I've spent arranging stones
have torn my back and taxed my brain.
Well enough not left alone
creates its own peculiar strain.
And pain creeps in to fill the space
left bare when you've done all you can
to build the barrenness away.
Can you feel the story in my hands?

These years I've spent neglecting home,
I scorn them now as tragic waste.
The time I've lost while I was gone
is time that cannot be replaced.
I run, knowing I'll lose the race
to love, forgive, to understand
and be understood; past erased.
Can you feel the story in my hands?

When all of this has passed away,
may I find what comfort that I can -
all those things that I couldn't say,
you felt the story in my hands.

This is a little loose with rhyme and syllable count, but I think it's still a Ballade. Submitted to dVerse.

16 comments:

Splendid use of the form. I like the way you crafted and curved it just enough to make each stanza new and fresh, the repetitions not sounding forced but reinforcing your initial image.

As to content, it hits home for evey woman, every mother. Those who work and those who don't. Why do those groups polarize? Working mothers, or career women do that for a multitude of reasons. As do women who work in the home at a kajillion jobs. Yet both are made to feel as though they've missed out. One by peers, the other by family. You capture all that here so beautiful, so implicitly. Excellent work!

"Well enough not left alone/creates its own peculiar strain." What a line--excellent piece, MZ--full of insight,mournful and very much a feel of something sung quietly to oneself; if that's a ballade, I'm all for it.